Legislative Council, Thursday 27 October 2022

Ms FORREST (Murchison) - Mr President, this bill is pretty straightforward and quite simple. As the Leader described, it is to give greater flexibility with the approvals to the commissioner. The point I raised in the briefing, and that I want the Leader to address, is in relation to the billboards. It is a bit hard to know from a road user's perspective of whether this is an approved billboard or not. It does not have a sign 'approved by the commissioner' on the bottom of it, so to speak. You probably would not be able to read it anyway. Driving around the state, as I do a lot - and particularly up in my electorate - we see these electronic billboards.

Often, they are there for a significant length of time. We saw them around the COVID-19 period, identifying where and what times COVID-19 testing could be done. The remote locations were away from the pathology labs, and also where vaccination clinics were open at various times. That is still entirely appropriate, and I am not suggesting that should not happen. There are others that seem to be there for a long time as well. A lot of them - and I say a lot, because I see it very frequently - after a period of time become very patchy in terms of the lights that are working.

Does the commissioner have the power or the responsibility to ensure that these billboards are readable - particularly for some sort of safety message - and who does someone call if they are not? I also ask, does the commissioner determine how much can be on it? Some of these billboards are quite large, some are not so large. For example, driving up the Bass Highway through Burnie, through the town, often electronic billboards are there, for a variety of reasons. There is a 70-kilometre limit through there, which is also on a bit of a curve; it is not long straights there. The signs often have three panels you need to read to get the full message. That is very distracting, because your eyes are notionally off the road on the billboards, thinking, does this apply to me? Is the road ahead shut up? I do not know; so surely, I need to be able to know what it says. If it is there for an important reason, I need to be able to read it.

There may be a bit of an issue with quality control, or consistency control, in the use of electronic billboards. I support their use for appropriate meaningful matters but they need to be able to be read, and that means all the lights need to be working. When some of the lights go out, the rest of them seem to dim, or it becomes more difficult to read. They need to only contain the necessary information and make it readable, in terms of how many screens you have to read in order for it to make sense. Bearing in mind, you may come around the corner and find the third panel up and you have to read it and make sense of it.

Does the commissioner have a role in this? If not, maybe they should. Someone needs to. For members of the public, if one of these billboards has lots of lights out or is too difficult to read, who should be contacted to address it? We talked about it in the briefing, and I hope the Leader can provide a bit more clarity about it. They become a hazard if they are not effective in the way they were intended to be.